How to forget work during off-hours

MUNCIE — A Ball State University researcher is generating international publicity for proving there is a free and simple way to forget about work during off-hours.

Psychology instructor Brandon Smit's study, published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, is creating headlines like the following in publications including New York Magazine, The Financial Times of London, Men's Health, The Economic Times of India and The Washington Post:

• "Worrying about work when you are not at work"

• "One way to stop obsessing over work when you're at home"

• "Keeping work at work"

In a survey of 103 employees, Smit observed they had more difficulty detaching from work during their leisure time when they had left job tasks uncompleted. However, one group of employees was encouraged to write down, at the end of the work day, where, when, and how they would complete these unfinished tasks. Smit found that those employees had an easier time forgetting about their work tasks during off-hours than those who didn't make plans.

"If you have an important deadline looming on the horizon, for example, your brain will keep nudging you with reminders, which makes it difficult to get a break from work demands," Smit says. "It seems like we have the ability to 'turn off', or at least 'turn down', these cognitive processes by planning out where, when, and how goals will be accomplished."

Before the study was published, by the British Psychological Society, there was a shortage of evidence-based tips people could use to detach from work on a daily basis.

"I'm excited that this research is reaching a broader audience, because ultimately I hope that it will help people who struggle with the all-too-common experience of letting work spill over into one's personal life," Smit told The Star Press.

Psychologists define detachment from work as both refraining from job-related activities and not thinking about job-related issues during off-job time.

Asked to give a fictional example of how to create a plan, Smit referred to a professor who leaves work for the day but still has mid-terms to grade. The professor's mind "will keep prompting her with thoughts about grading until it's finished."

So an effective plan might be: "I will finish grading mid-terms at the coffee shop (answers the question where) tomorrow after my last lecture (answers the question when). I'll grab my laptop, the mid-terms and the grading rubric before I leave my office so I have everything I will need (answers the how)."

Asked in an interview why create the plan before leaving work; why can't it be created when you first get home, Smit answered: "I don't know if it's necessarily critical to write plans at work rather than home, but I imagine that planning at work can help create some segmentation between work and home … If I sit down to plan when I'm at home … now I've started working at home during my leisure time, detachment has been reduced and I'm not recharging my batteries for tomorrow's work day."

(The whole idea here is to avoid taking work home. Duh!)

In a story headlined, "Shonda Rhimes' Brilliant Trick for Keeping Work at Work," news aggregator/blog The Huffington Post reported that TV producer Rhimes ("Grey's Anatomy," "Private Practice," "How to Get Away with Murder") doesn't respond to emails after 7 p.m. or on weekends, and if you work for her, she encourages you to do the same. "Work will happen 24 hours a day, 365 days a year if you let it," Rhimes was quoted.

"If Rhimes (or you) wanted to take it one step further, she might heed the advice of Brandon Smit, a researcher on work-family conflict at Ball State University in Indiana," the Huff Post report added.

According to Smit, who earned his doctorate from St. Louis University in 2014, research finds that planning's benefits include not only enjoying your time off but increasing your chance of actually completing your goals.